A Dickens of a dream

My head had barely hit the pillow New Year’s Eve when I awoke with a start to find a cartoon butler at the end of my bed.

“Who are you,” I gasped? “I am the ghost of cartoons past,” he droned.

“Surely you must be a figment of my imagination, a bit of undigested flan or my eighth glass of champagne,” I said.

He merely smirked, and it brought to mind one of my early cartoons. ”Now I recognize you. You are one of my favorite cartoon characters,” I said. “I drew you as a snooty Worth Avenue salesman, a snooty maître d’, a snooty butler …

“I prefer to think of myself as droll,” he said. “I am here to remind you of the glee with which you wielded your paintbrush in the early days. Cartooning for the Palm Beach Daily News was a fresh experience and you poked fun at pompous traditions, undeserved entitlement and the very wealthy with wild abandon.”

“I guess I’ve backed off those themes lately,” I said. “But that was 20 years ago when I was a young hothead.”

He looked at me for a long moment and sighed, “Whatever. I’ve done my job here. Two more cartoons will visit you tonight. Go back to sleep.”

The next thing I knew, a strange light awakened me again from the corner of my bedroom. Looking over, I spied a colorful cartoon character that looked a lot like Town Council President David Rosow wrapped in an ermine-lined robe with a wreath on his head.

He glowered at me. “Yeah, passing the hot potato, kicking the can down the road, yada, yada. If I see one more kicking the can down the road cartoon …”

“Hey, I’ve got to call them the way I see them,” I exclaimed, “but point taken on the overused metaphor.”

With that, he began opening his robe. “Do I really need to see this,” I asked? “It’s for your own good,” he said.

Between the folds of his robe appeared a bunch of emaciated looking gnome-like characters. ”Who are they supposed to represent?” I asked.

“I think they’re all the Palm Beach Theater Guild people who hate your guts,” he said.

“Hmm, maybe, but they look more like small-business shop owners wasting away in Palm Beach business districts to me,” said I.

“Oh,” he said, closing his robe quickly. “Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you lay off the can-kicking cartoons in the future.”

“Done,” I said. “But thanks for the neat gnomes under the robe idea.”

I woke up one more time to see a dark shadow in my room. “You must be the ghost of cartoons future because you look nebulous and unformed,” I said. It nodded its kind-of- head. “What are you here to show me?”

It waved its kind-of arm, and I was looking at an ornate headstone. It had figures of almost every character I’d ever drawn in sculpted relief on it, topped off with the GOP elephant and Democratic donkey pummeling each other. The inscription read, “Here lies David Willson, he drew a crowd.”

“That’s it?” I yelped. “That’s the best pun they could come up with?”

It shrugged its kind-of shoulders, and that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up on New Year’s Day as light as a feather, as happy as an angel, and as merry as a schoolboy.

David Willson has been the Palm Beach Daily News editorial cartoonist for 20 years. His new book, Billionaires and Butterfly Ballots, A 20-Year Palm Beach ‘Cartoonspective,’ is available at palmbeachcartoons.com.